Polygon’s popularity is growing by the day as more DeFi and NFT projects launch on its network. Getting your funds over to Polygon can be a little confusing for some people. While it might seem daunting, its actually fairly simple. I will provide a couple options to get started on Polygon below. Feel free to read through the whole article or jump to the part that applies to you.
Topics covered in this article:
- Setup your MetaMask Wallet to use Polygon
- Move Funds from ETH to Polygon
- Move Funds from Binance to Polygon
- Move Funds from BSC (Binance Smart Chain) to Polygon
- Add Token Balances to MetaMask
Setup Your MetaMask Wallet to Use on Polygon
Interacting with apps/websites on Polygon will be just like on Ethereum, you will use MetaMask to sign and approve transactions. First we need to add the network into the MetaMask settings:
From the main MetaMask screen select the Network drop down, and click Custom RPC:
Enter in the following information and click Save:
You will now be able to select Matic Mainnet from the Network drop down:
Your MetaMask is ready to use! Now we need to send some funds over to the Polygon network.
Move Funds from ETH to Polygon Network
Polygon has it’s own bridge to get funds over to its network from Ethereum. First make sure your MetaMask is on the ETH network (in case you’re still on Polygon from the previous step). Then visit the Matic wallet: https://wallet.matic.network/bridge
Login with MetaMask:
Once you login, this will take you directly to the bridge. Next you need to choose the token (ETH, USDC, etc) you want to send over to Polygon. After you select your token, enter the amount you want to send, or click Max to send it all. Once everything looks good, click Transfer
After you click transfer a message window will pop up. This is saying that the transaction will take a few minutes so be patient. The second message is referring to staking your $MATIC tokens. If you want to stake $MATIC for rewards, they need to stay on the Ethereum network. Click Continue.
The next window is your transfer costs. Since this is an Ethereum transaction you will need to pay ETH gas costs. Try to do this when gas prices are low, you can check here: https://www.gasnow.org/ – If you are good with the costs click Continue.
Lastly, we get our overview window. Make sure everything is correct then click Continue.
Once you click Continue, the MetaMask window will pop up to pay the gas fees and approve the transaction. Click Confirm.
The Matic Bridge will change to a Transaction In Progress status. I’d suggest leaving this open so that you can see when it finishes.
After your ETH transaction is confirmed, you will get the MM notification and the Matic Bridge will change to a Confirmed status. Now we just need to wait for the transfer to be completed on the Polygon side.
After the transaction is confirmed on the Polygon network the Matic Bridge will show as complete.
Now you can see your new balance in your MetaMask wallet. Go back to MM and switch the network to Polygon. You should see tokens that you sent over. Note: ETH thats sent to Polygon is “wrapped” so most applications will show it as WETH instead of ETH. This is normal.
Move Funds From Binance to Polygon
Unfortunately Binance (same with KUcoin) does not have an option to withdraw directly to the Polygon chain but since this question comes up a lot I wanted to make sure I covered it. If you have funds on Binance that you want to get onto Polygon, you will just withdraw them to your ETH MM and follow the steps above. When withdrawing from Binance be sure to select the ERC20 option.
Move Funds From BSC (Binance Smart Chain) to Polygon
We will use Zero Exchange for this part of tutorial. Start by heading over to https://app.0.exchange/
Note: All bridges rely on liquidity in order for users to transfer tokens. If a bridge doesn’t have “exit liquidity” you won’t be able transfer funds.
Lets start by checking the Polygon liquidity. Switch your MetaMask to the Polygon Network if you’re not already on it and click Pools on the left side:
This will take us to the Pools information page and we want to check a few items:
We can see that there is currently one pool which can swap between MZERO (the MATIC version of ZERO) and MATIC. So we know that we can bridge over ZERO and swap it to MATIC which is the native token on the Polygon network. The second item we want to look at is the liquidity. We can see that we’re able to swap and pull out 140,000 MATIC.
Please note that if you are doing very large swaps there’s a good chance you will start to encounter slippage.
Now that we know what we need to swap, switch your MetaMask to BSC and go to the Swaps page:
At the time of this writing you probably need BNB or BUSD to swap for Zero.
Make sure you are on the “SmartChain” network. Choose BNB/BUSD and enter your amount. Select ZERO as the coin you are swapping to. Always check the price impact (slippage I referred to earlier) and the fees. If everything looks good, click Swap.
The MM window pops up to confirm the transaction on BSC. If everything looks good, click Confirm.
The transaction should complete pretty quickly and you will see your ZERO balance.
Next click Transfer in the sidebar. This is the cross chain bridge we will use to move ZERO over to Polygon.
Select ZERO from the dropdown, add your balance or click Max. Choose Polygon for the Destination Chain. If everything looks good, click Transfer.
A window will pop up for approval. Click Approve Transfer.
Another MM window pops up to allow ZERO exchange to “spend” your ZERO so it can send to Polygon. Click Confirm.
After it approves we can click Start Transfer.
One last MM window comes up so we can pay the BSC transaction fees to send the ZERO tokens. Click Confirm.
After the transaction confirms you will get a success window. Now we can switch over to Polygon and wait for our Zero token balance to update. It can take a little while if the bridge is congested.
After changing MM back to the Polygon network, click Swap in the sidebar. We see our new Polygon ZERO balance and we can swap from ZERO to MATIC. Congrats, you bridged from BSC to Polygon!
Adding Token Balances to MetaMask
Once you bridge your tokens, they wont show up in MetaMask until you add the contract address. You can find your token balance here:
https://explorer-mainnet.maticvigil.com/address/<enter your wallet address here>/tokens
Copy the token address. We will use this to add it to MetMask.
Go to the Assets tab and click Add Token
Paste in the token address into Token Contract Address (The symbol and decimals will autofill) and click Next.
Click Add Tokens and you are all set! Enjoy Polygon!
